


Drifting

by tookishheart



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-08-31 23:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8598427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tookishheart/pseuds/tookishheart
Summary: Eleanora wakes in 2287 remembering the bombs as if they only fell that morning. The world she walks out of the Vault to face is definitely going to take some getting used to.*Long work (currently in progress), slow burn, multiple relationships (the only one I'm totally set on at the minute is Sole/Hancock). This fic will probably grow into an epic cause I'm having way too much fun writing it. Very early stages of plot, but this isn't gonna follow the canon story arc.





	1. The Only One Left

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've ever uploaded that I've written singlehandedly! I hope you enjoy :)  
> This is gonna end up being really long but I'll try to keep the chapters short-ish and updates fast. There's minimal info in the summary, and no warnings because this is literally just setting the fic up and getting the ball rolling, but I'll change warnings and add in tags as necessary. Anything potentially triggering will be listed at the start of the chapter, but just a heads up now that it'll probably get pretty dark pretty quickly.  
> (If you're interested in my other work, search for Druella Gaunt and you should see what you're looking for on my shared account.)  
> Charitable mention goes to my pal Laura for naming this fic, and for helping motivate me to write it. You're the best (y)

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

The cryogenic pod hisses and the airtight seal unlocks with a spray of water. As the hinges move, so does Eleanora, sliding forwards and tumbling from the seat onto the hard concrete. Her entire body is rigid, frozen solid, and she cannot move more than her eyes madly as she searches for the man with the gun.

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

The minute her muscles warm enough to move she scrambles forward, towards Nate. Her heart is pounding and she can’t breathe. “Come… on…”

The door won’t budge and she can’t grip anything strongly enough to be of any use anyway. Her husband lies just behind the door and she wants to hold him. She needs him. He needs to wake up too.

“There has to be… a release…”

She looks into the pod and touches her head to the glass window, feeling the chill from inside. Her eyes shift right and she sees the big red lever. The big red lever that is clearly designed to open the door. She grabs at it weakly, running on energy she didn’t have a moment ago.

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

The cryo pod opens with a hiss and Eleanora needs Nate to fall forward like she did. She scrabbles at him, at that infernal vault suit and his hand resting on his leg. But he doesn’t move, his eyes don’t open, he… he-

“Nate! N-nate- no, Nate, N-n-n-“

Her hand pulls at his, holding it, chafing to get some warmth, to wake him.

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

“Shut up! Shut up, Nate. Nate, please!”

Her teeth are chattering violently and she’s shivering, but she can’t tell if it’s shock or cold. She clutches at his hand desperately, pulls on him, but he’s frozen to the chair. His wedding ring slips down his finger and her breath hitches and-

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

She rests her forehead on her husband’s frozen hand and slides the ring from his finger. She slides it onto her thumb on her right hand, the only finger it will fit.

“I’ll find who did this. And I’ll get Shaun back. I promise.”

Her shivering increases and she steps back and pulls the cryo pod lever down once again. If her husband is- well, she may as well keep the coffin closed. She blinks back tears, but they come anyway, hot and bitter and salty where they drip off her nose onto her lips. The people- the ones who took Shaun- they must be nearby, she might be able to stop them. Her tears still come, but she turns from the body of her husband towards the direction she walked into this Godforsaken place not long- wait.

The groaning of old metalwork pierces the veil of her grief and Eleanora’s eyes widen in shock as she takes in the view of Vault 111. She was _just_ here- it had only just opened, the paintwork still not quite dry in some places, and now? Now what little of the paint that remains is discoloured and dirty, and rust is creeping across the ceiling. She listens harder, trying to hear if there’s anyone moving behind the door. Something clunks behind the big metal door, and it doesn’t matter to Eleanora if it’s the people who have Shaun or not because it’s enough to spur her to move, forcing herself to go despite her shivers. Her lungs burn with the effort of taking breaths as she climbs the three small stairs and across the cold metal landing towards the outside world once again.

But when Eleanora’s fingers find the switch the door won’t open, and panic rises inside her chest again.

“WARNING. CRITICAL FAILURE IN CRYOGENIC ARRAY. ALL VAULT RESIDENTS MUST VACATE IMMEDIATELY.”

“I’m gonna die- in- here.”

She staggers to the left, slumping against the wall and crying. A door slides open and she falls through it, her eyes going wide as she scrabbles for purchase in the corners. Her heart pounds but she climbs to her feet and moves off as fast as she can manage. Many of the pipes in this maintenance corridor are rusted too, leaking a little here and there. Eleanora can’t understand what’s going on. She strikes out in what she hopes is the general direction of the way out and stumbles her way along, still shivering. Behind her, the automated voice in the loudspeaker gets quieter, and eventually falls silent as Eleanora stumbles along. The silence is deafening, punctuated occasionally by loud groans of metal and dripping water.

And… is that… a cricket? Whatever it is, she decides after a moment, it’s far too loud to actually be a cricket. Besides, this is a Vault. Secure, safe and fallout-free! Presumably that means- meant- no bugs. But Eleanora doesn’t understand what’s going on, so she looks around for a weapon just in case. She rounds a corner and is greeted by the sight of a horrendously clean looking skeleton, its bones rasped clean. It’s still wearing a Vault 111 suit- and the leather armor that Eleanora recognises as the security guard outfits. She scurries over to it, too relieved to really think about what she’s seeing, and pulls at the helmet the skeleton is wearing. It pops off the body with no problem at all. Unfortunately, so does its skull, and Eleanora feels a shriek she’s not sure she’ll be able to stop rising in her throat. She stifles it and shakes the skull out of the helmet.

“Just be prepared. Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five. Eleanora Smith, Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five. Eleanora Smith, Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five.”

She continues mumbling under her breath as she pulls the helmet over her own hair and straps it under her chin securely. She debates leaving the rest of the armor on the skeleton alone and just taking the baton, but then a particularly loud crunk from somewhere behind her makes her leap forward and her mind is made up.

The leather is too big really, built for a person much bulkier than she is, but she tightens the straps and feels a little more secure. She grabs the security baton from the skeletal fingers and looks further down the corridor with a steely gaze.

“Eleanora Smith, Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five.”

She moves off again, her feet as quiet as possible on the dilapidated metal flooring of the Vault. She muses on how miraculous it is that the place isn’t in bits around her. But Shaun might be just ahead, so she pushes on, moving past the reactor room and out through a corridor that winds through several bunk rooms. All are just as… well, trashed is the only word. Eleanora keeps her mind from wandering, not trusting that shriek to stay put if she thinks about anything other than her baby boy, in the arms of the Vault Tec scientist in the lobby of the Vault. If she can just get there quickly, she can get answers and hold her son again.

Her son.

Nate’s son, too.

She blinks away the tears. It’s not safe, this world is too alien. She will grieve later. For now…

“Eleanora Smith. Two. One. Oh. Eight. Two. Oh. Five. Two.” She mutters through gritted teeth.

The Security Office provides the best in terms of both weaponry _and_ answers- while there’s no people, no Shaun, there is a rusty old 10mm pistol with plenty of ammo on the hidden shelf of the main desk. The computer is unlocked, and halfway through making a note on what Eleanora presumes is one of the security guards’ diary.

“Icebergs,” she spits bitterly, reading from the terminal. “’Now he's locked himself in his office along with the rest of the science staff. We're supposed to hand over any food, weapons, and medicine we have by tonight’… God, what the hell happened here? Am I the only one left?”

She ignores the way her voice cracks when she says that aloud and pushes the shriek back down. Not now.

The terminal activates the doorway to the main body of the Vault, and thus Eleanora steps out into a wide, well-lit hallway. It looks just as terrible as the other areas of the Vault, only there are _creatures_ here. Bugs, cockroaches by the look of them, but as big as her leg. She shudders and pulls out the pistol, taking aim and hoping the trigger will still work. The bugs chitter at her and advance slowly. She fires a couple shots off, but is still shivering too hard to really be able to aim, and the bullets ricochet off the wall and the floor. One, miraculously, manages to catch one of the bugs on its rebound, and it drops, legs twitching.

“Fuck it,” she says, dropping the spare bullets and the pistol. “Old fashioned way it is.”

The baton is sturdy and weighty in her hand when she pulls it out. She doesn’t dare get too close to the giant bugs in case they do something to her, so she resorts to thwacking at them as hard as she can with her arm extended, eyes half closed to avoid having to think about _why_ cockroaches are suddenly the size of her entire leg. She makes contact with something fleshy and the impact jars up her arm. There’s a resounding crunch and that’s the second bug down. Just one left- but too late she realises it’s crept closer than its unfortunate friend and it manages to get a lucky slice across her shins with its sharp legs, causing her to cry out in pain.

She ends the fight decisively and spits on the corpse of the last bug to die. Its leg, still covered in her blood, twitches.

“Ugh.”

The rest of the Vault is empty of all life. Eleanora limps the rest of the way to the lobby as fast as her legs can carry her, praying she’ll catch her son in time. She wants to explain- this has just been a misunderstanding, that’s all- they’re ordinary Americans, Nate’s not even in the army anymore...

But the entrance to Vault 111 is sealed, and empty. Littered around the entrance are more skeletons, this time wrapped in ragged Vault Tec lab coats. She stumbles over one and looks down in horror only to realise that it doesn’t have both its arms.

“Oh, God,” she whispers. “Its arm is off.”

She stumbles to what looks like the control panel and realises just why the skeleton had a missing arm. A Pip-Boy is clamped loosely around the remains. It’s a lucky break for her, and the only chance she’s got of getting out of the Vault, because she’s read the pamphlet about Vault security enough times (stupid Vault-Tec sales guy shoving them in her mailbox) to know the only way in and out of the damn things is with one.

“This better still work,” she mutters. The screen is dusty, but with a bit of… gentle encouragement and a quick muddle around with the ‘on’ switch the long-life uranium battery flickers into existence once again and begins a scan of her bodily functions.

_WARNING_ , it says. _USER CORE TEMPERATURE BELOW SAFE LEVELS._

“Yeah, no shit,” Eleanora tells it, locking it into place around her left arm. “What gave it away? The uncontrollable shivering?”

It pings again.

_WARNING_ , it says. _WOUND DETECTED ON USER RIGHT LOWER SHIN. SEEK MEDICAL ADVICE IMMEDIATELY. BLOOD LOSS WITHIN SAFE PARAMETERS_.

“Well, at least I know I’m not going to die immediately. Right… how do I get out of here?”

The connector for the Vault Doors is hidden almost fully behind the screen of the Pip-Boy, but it slots neatly into place in the security terminal once she’s located it and beeps cheerfully.

_CONNECTING TO VAULT 111 MAINFRAME. . ._

_CONNECTION AUTHORISED_

_OVERRIDING VAULT 111 SECURITY PROTOCOL. . ._

_OVERRIDE SUCCESSFUL_

_OPEN VAULT?_

_YES <_

_NO_

“God, yes,” whispers Eleanora.

The machinery groans into life and swooshes through its programmed movements. Sparks fly as the door screws are shifted and the metal screeches its way out of the snug frame and rolls away, revealing to Eleanora the tumbledown elevator shaft. The elevator is crawling back down the shaft, running surprisingly quickly and smoothly considering the state of the rest of the Vault. It brings down fresh air, air from the outside world, and she takes a deep breath.

“I’m coming, Shaun.”

She steps on the platform and hits the button on the floor with her foot determinedly. She’ll catch up to whoever has her son, and he will grow up knowing how brave his Dad-

“Eleanora Smith. Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five.”


	2. Bye, Honey

The lift shudders to a halt and Eleanora shades her eyes from the sunshine, wiping away the tears that pool in the corners of her eyes until the world stops being so washed out and blurry.

What she sees brings her to her knees.

“God, no. God, please, no.”

The world stretches before her for miles, burned and desolate. She can see the water tower that pumped to Concord, the name emblazoned proudly on its side. She and Nate were just going there, how can it look so destroyed? He was going to celebrate with other vets, he was going to…

“I don’t _understand_ ,” she whines. “God, please, no.”

Shaun isn’t here, though. Whoever took him clearly had a little bit more of a head start than she’d anticipated, and so she tears her heartbroken gaze from the once-beautiful view- _had it really been only that morning? The fire was so hot, so horrifying_ \- and turns to scurry down the hill after them. They had probably headed for Sanctuary Hills, she reasons, before striking off along the road to Concord and… well, they couldn’t be that far ahead. She’ll catch them up, explain the misunderstanding, and then she and her son can go home.

She passes the collection of skeletons with a look of terror.

 

_“You have to let me through!”_

_“You’re not authorised.”_

_“AUTHORISED? I **am** Vault-Tec!”_

_“Please, let us through!”_

_“We just need to get away!”_

_“Help us!”_

_“Forget the suitcase, John, just come **on**!”_

 

“What… I don’t understand. I don’t. I can’t.” Eleanora takes a deep breath, filling her lungs so full they hurt. “Eleanora Smith. Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five. Come on, Elle. Get it together. Just catch up with Shaun.”

She lets her feet carry her back down the hill as fast as she dares, although she doesn’t ever break into a full run.

 _WARNING,_ pings her Pip-Boy. _USER CORE TEMPERATURE STILL BELOW SAFE LEVELS. SEEK IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ASSISTANCE FOR USER RIGHT SHIN WOUND TO PREVENT INFECTION AND FURTHER BLOOD LOSS._

“Later,” she replies impatiently.

The footbridge across the beck that turns Sanctuary Hills into an island is shattered, rotted away into the sludge that sits where Eleanora can remember the water giggling merrily only a few hours ago. Nervously, she taps the Geiger counter on her Pip-Boy. Where’s the fallout?

The Geiger counter needle flickers the tiniest amount when she taps it and clicks once softly, but otherwise remains silent.

“If I die, I’m blaming you,” she tells it.

The Geiger counter ticks once more as if to sass her, but the needle doesn’t move. Eleanora doesn’t trust the stream-bed, though, and does her best to leap it with her wounded leg and hypothermia. She clears it by a few centimeters and limps on, up the shallow hill that crests onto the road leading to Concord.

Even Sanctuary Hills is in ruins. None of the windows have glass in them, but she’s expecting that- an impact that big, that close, of course it was going to blow the windows out. But the shattered glass isn’t anywhere to be found, and it jars her because it was _just this morning_. And there’s little to be said for the state of repair of the place. More than a few of the buildings are nothing more than a collection of rubble and metal shrapnel.

That little bubble of hurt in her chest grows as she takes in the devastation. She remembers all too clearly that it was only yesterday that Mr Jones was mowing his lawn, and Joe had walked with Scamp down the road to visit them because he loved Nate, and he was only getting in the way of Mr Jones’s lawnmower. Joe had said to her:

_“Hey Mrs Smith! My mom, she’s making cherry pie for dessert tonight, and she wanted to know if you and Mr Smith would like a slice for your dessert, too. She said that you and Mr Smith will need feedin’ up on some proper soul food, seeing as how you’ve got your little boy now.”_

_“That would be nice, thank you Joe. Tell your mom I’ll pop round at seven for a slice or two.”_

_“Okay, I’ll do that. Hey, I think my dad’s stopped the lawnmower now. I’d better take Scamp home. Thanks for helping me keep him distracted, Mr Smith!”_

_“You’re welcome, kid. Anytime. Say hi to your parents for me, won’t you.”_

Eleanora’s heart breaks all over again as she looks down the road to the Jones’s and sees only destruction. They were only just beginning to settle in here, and she had so hoped for a new family. She had needed it, needed others alongside her and Nate and their boy. The bubble in her chest grows a little more and her throat burns with the urge to let that scream out, but she quashes it. Maybe Shaun is- maybe the people who took him, maybe they took him home. After all, they barely had time to grab him, let alone any diapers or feeding bottles, so it would make sense to go home and look for some.

She turns on her heel decisively and moves off toward their house, deliberately not looking at anything other than the rusted mailbox at the end of their path. The house will be fine, she thinks. It was only this morning. Yesterday, maybe.

She hears a familiar hissing and metallic clicking as she nears the peeling front door. It is propped halfway open, exactly how Eleanora left it when she ran out to the Vault, but one of the hinges has snapped so now it rests at an uncomfortable angle. Inside, the furniture is mostly intact.

“As I live and breathe! Mum… it’s… it’s REALLY you!”

Eleanora looks at Codsworth, floating in the middle of what was once their living room, dumbfounded by his familiarity.

“Codsworth! What- what happened, to the world?”

It’s all she can think to ask.

“The world, mum? Well, besides our geraniums being the envy of Sanctuary Hills, I’m afraid everything has been dreadfully dull.”

Eleanora shakes her head in confusion. “Geraniums- Codsworth, what the hell?”

“Oh, but things will be so much more exciting with you and sir home again… where is your better half, by the by?”

“He’s- he’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where? Oh, has he taken Shaun to the Veteran’s Hall in Concord? How delightful.”

The robotic intonation in Codsworth’s voice is more than a little off, Eleanora realises. She looks at him carefully. She’d been against buying a Mister Handy unit- didn’t trust them, didn’t want someone else undermining her place as housekeep in the family... but…

“Codsworth, are you… are you okay?”

“Oh, mum… it’s been _miserable_. All these years, and not a soul for company! For the first decade I tried to keep the house together. But do you know how impossible it is to wax nuclear fallout from wood? And not to mention polishing a rusting car,” Codsworth wails. “And the _house_ , oh goodness! How can you _dust_ a ruined house?!”

But Eleanora isn’t listening.

“Mum?”

Silence.

“…Ahem. Mum? Is everything okay?”

“Codsworth, what did you say?”

“Me, mum? Only that it’s impossible to dust a ruined house-“

“No, no… the other thing. ‘All these years’? What- what do you mean?” Eleanora’s voice is a ghost of a whisper.

“All these years, mum- you’ve been in that Vault for two centuries while I’ve been down here alone.”

“Two… two… two hundred?”

“Two hundred years. Actually, I’d say it’s been two hundred and ten, but what’s a decade here or there, eh?”

“I’ve been in that Vault… two hundred years?”

“Why, yes, mum. You entered the Vault on October 23rd, 2077. Today is… well, it’s October 2287, although I can’t be sure of the day, had a few dings on the old chronometer over the years.”

Eleanora’s knees buckle under her. Her Pip-Boy pings.

_WARNING. USER TEMPERATURE REMAINS BELOW SAFE LEVELS. USER RIGHT SHIN WOUND REMAINS AT RISK OF INFECTION. SEEK MEDICAL ASSISTANCE._

-

Eleanora wakes slowly to a familiar stabbing in her lower back. She’s fallen asleep on the sofa again, hasn’t she… Nate will laugh as she staggers from here to the bedroom, hopefully not disturbing Shaun in the process. He always laughs when she falls asleep watching the television late at night. Her eyes are so tired… if she could just get rid of that loose spring, she could sleep here all night.

“Miss Eleanora, ma’am. Miss Eleanora, wake up.”

Damn that robot! He’s probably going to encourage her to go to bed. If he gets any louder he’ll wake Shaun. She waves a hand at him impatiently and mmm’s under her breath.

“Miss Eleanora, ma’am. I’m afraid the wound in your leg needs bandaging. I need you to lift it for me.”

“Mmm- no, Nate knows I’m watching TV, Codsworth. Go power down.”

“Mum, I’m afraid it’s worse than I feared. You’ve been too cold for far too long. I’ll need to warm you. Hold still while I find something.”

“It’s not late,” Eleanora mumbles in reply. “Just five minutes till my show ends. Nate, honey, tell him.”

Eleanora feels something heavy and dusty settle over her and she coughs as the dust finds its way into her mouth.

Her eyes finally flicker open.

She can see the stars through the roof.

For one instant moment, confusion reigns in her head and she panics, sitting bolt upright and looking around the room wildly. Everything is- why is it broken? Then reality hits her and her shoulders sag. Codsworth floats back into the room with an old metal tin from the wall outside in his hand. His three eyes blink kindly at her as she looks at him.

“Ah, Miss Eleanora. You’re awake. I do apologise for disturbing you, but you need first aid. Please allow me to clean your leg and bandage it.”

Eleanora looks down at her injured leg sticking out from under their old living room rug and nods. She can see bone in the cut across the front of her shin and looks away. “Yes, please. Before- before my Pip-Boy gets any more sarcastic with me.”

Codsworth just blinks. “Mum, I believe only Mister Handy units and above have the processing capabilities of sarcasm.”

“Sure, Codsworth.”

That Mister Handy was a spectacular purchase, thinks Eleanora as Codsworth cleans and bandages her leg efficiently. Still going strong after two hundred years.

“There you are, mum. All done. If you’ll follow me outside, I’ve taken the liberty of lighting a small fire for you to keep you warm. You were unconscious for several hours.”

“Thank you, Codsworth.” Eleanora feels that little bubble in her chest again, the one that wants to scream and scream and scream. She ignores it, wraps the rug around her shoulders, and follows her robot butler outside. The night passes slowly, but Codsworth makes her drink warm water and slowly she thaws out. By the time the sky is tinged pink to the east, Codsworth seems satisfied- as does her Pip-Boy.

_USER CORE TEMPERATURE STABILISED. REMEMBER TO CHANGE YOUR WOUND DRESSINGS REGULARLY TO PREVENT INFECTION._

_SCANNING. . ._

_USER HEALTHY. RETURNING TO NORMAL FUNCTIONS._

Her Pip-Boy pings happily and then reloads itself, opening to a screen Eleanora hasn’t seen before.

_NEW USER RECOGNISED. PREVIOUS USER DATA WIPED FROM MEMORY PER SECURITY PROTOCOL. WELCOME, NEW_USER_2. PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME AND DATE OF BIRTH._

Eleanora complies, and the Pip-Boy loads itself once again, this time to a map of the local area. She flicks a couple of buttons and nods to herself, satisfied that it’s functioning and rotating through different settings as it’s supposed to. Codsworth appears outside with a box of Dandy Boy Apples and Salisbury Steak just as Eleanora hits the button for the holotape player.

“Mum, I do believe- I found this, shortly after the bombs. I do believe Master Nate was planning to give it to you as a gift. Here,” he says, pulling the holotape from his internal storage compartment. “I’m quite sure sir would rather you have it than I.”

Eleanora accepts the holotape silently, and inserts it immediately into the holotape slot. From the speaker comes the sound of static, then:

_“Oops! Haha- no, no, little fingers away kiddo. Right there- go on.”_

A baby giggles and burbles, and and Eleanora’s heart clenches.

_“Yay! Hi honey. Listen… I don’t think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are. But we’re going to anyway. You are kind, and loving, and funny- yes, that’s right Shaun- and patient. So patient. Patience of a saint, as your mother used to say. Look… with Shaun and us all being at home together, it’s been an amazing year. But I know our best days, they’re yet to come. There will be changes, sure, things we’ll need to adjust to. I’ll rejoin the civilian workforce, you’ll shake the dust off your law degree. But everything we do, no matter how hard… we do it for our family.”_

Shaun gurgles again into the mic and Nate snorts. _“That’s right, kiddo. Say goodbye, Shaun. Bye bye, say bye bye! Bye, honey. We love you.”_

Eleanora doesn’t realise she’s running until long after she’s out of the ruins of Sanctuary Hills. Behind her are the voices of her infant son and husband, both long dead, one buried forever in the ruins of Vault 111, one lost to time in the Wastes. She’ll never see her baby boy grow, ride a bike, fly a kite, shoot a bb gun… get his first A. His first girlfriend- or boyfriend. She’ll never see any of it. It’s… gone. The world is gone. She is sick to her stomach, her heart pounding  but she can’t stop running, because behind her still are her husband’s words, ringing in her ears.

“Bye, honey. We love you.”

She runs until she’s sick, throwing up only water. The bombs dropped before they’d even cooked breakfast, and the coffee Codsworth had given her seems so long ago. She can feel the acid in her stomach churning, and eventually throwing up is burning her throat so much she’s struggling to breathe, so she looks around for a safe place. Pulowski Preservation Shelter, that’ll do. She has no coins on her, but she presses the coin return button hopefully and the door swings open, revealing grey bloodstains and a skeletal corpse inside. Wordlessly, Eleanora kicks the body out of the way and shoves the door closed, pulling the lock down into place and hoping it will stay warm enough for her not to shiver to death.

She presses her back against the wall of the shelter and lets herself sink down onto the floor, tucking her knees against her chest. Her heart is pounding and she needs to eat desperately, but she doesn’t care enough to move.

“What does it even matter?” she mumbles, her eyes half closed despite her shivering and the cold. “I should be dead. I am dead. Who cares…”

She doesn’t hear the thunderous footsteps outside the Preservation Shelter not long after- her sleep is deep and dreamless, restful despite her uncomfortable position.


	3. Deathclaw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where it starts to get dark.  
> tw for rape mention, necrophilia mention, murder and violence.

When she wakes, she has no idea how long she’s been asleep, but her bones ache and she’s too stiff to really move much.

“Uuuuuuh…” she groans, rolling her neck and trying to unlock her knees so she can move.

It takes her at least ten minutes to stand and while she moves her legs slowly to get her full range of motion back she checks her Pip-Boy.

_WELCOME BACK, ELEANORA SMITH_

_USER HEALTHY. RECOMMEND BANDAGE CHANGE TO PREVENT INFECTION._

_10/25/2287 15:44_

She’s not actually bothered what day it is, or what week it is, or even if this is reality and not some grotesque simulation she’ll wake up from. She feels hollow.

When she finally stumbles out of the Pulowski Preservation Shelter she’s almost sick again- the shelter was small and looked dirty, but much like she remembers them pre-War. It takes her a few minutes to realise she’s thirsty and the reason the sun is hurting her eyes so much is because she’s got a dehydration headache. By this point, she’s wandering round some ruined houses. She hopes they’ll have food inside- she needs to eat something before she faints and if she doesn’t get something to drink soon she just knows she’s going to get a migraine.

A lot of the houses have boarded up windows and doors, which confuses Eleanora- did these people have prior warning of the bombs?- but more than a few of them have empty window frames and doors kicked in or disintegrated through time.

“Oh eight two one two oh five five,” she mutters to comfort herself.

She doesn’t want to go into the houses. It’s trespassing and it would be burglary to take anything from these places. She wanders through the devastation, past smashed up cars and ones with keys still in the ignition. Part of her wants to see if they’ll still work, but the coolant’s probably all but run dry and she doesn’t really want to see any more mushroom clouds for a while.

Besides, how many people out here would know how to drive after two hundred years?

No, best not.

Instead she wanders in between houses, skirting around tumbledown garden fences and hoping she’ll find the center of town soon, so she can find a shop and see if she can exchange something for food. Or something. Her Pip-Boy’s Geiger counter ticks softly as she approaches one house, so she steps back and goes to double back on herself, thinking maybe she can take another route from the crossroads a little further back. She doesn’t get far before she hears voices, and she ducks behind a mail bin before she knows what she’s doing.

“Where’d that Vaultie go? I want that suit.”

“One-eleven? Paul, there ain’t even a Vault one-eleven.”

“I say there is- I say it’s up north-west of the city ruins. And I say I ain’t ever seen a Vaultie with one-eleven on their back. Means she’s green.”

“You reckon she’ll have anything worth it? _Besides_ the suit, Paul. We all know you got that sick fetish of yours.”

“It ain’t a fetish,” snaps Paul defensively. “They’re backup. Worth a lotta money.”

“ _Sure_ it ain’t a fetish. Look, she came down here. Where is she?”

“Check the houses. She can’t have got far.”

The sounds from the two of them separate, crossing to opposite sides of the road. Paul is by far quieter, and Eleanora struggles to hear him opening through doors and poking his nose round corridors. The other man, though, takes a more direct approach.

“Vault lady!” he yells into each house, before firing a few bullets from a machine gun in a random spray.

Eleanora’s heart is pounding- she can hear them approaching down the street and she knows that leather armor is going to be essentially useless against their gunfire. Her mind is spinning already with dehydration and shock, so thinking is not an easy task.

“Oh-eight-two-one-two-oh-five-five. Gotta move. Where’s safe?” she breathes to herself, trying to push herself up from the floor enough so she can run. She’s not stupid enough to hope they wouldn’t kill her- Vault suit fetishes and Paul’s trigger happy friend aside, she’s already had to kill giant bugs who wanted her dead. She’s not going to push her luck with these two.

She looks ahead and actually takes in the view. The reason why the Geiger counter was ticking is because there is a van, full of radioactive waste barrels, that has overturned and spilled its contents across the neighborhood. Some of the barrels are leaking, and they’re scattered across the entire road past the house. Clearly that truck driver met a nasty end.

Eleanora doesn’t bother chasing the image from her mind of the mushroom cloud she knows the driver must have seen just before he died. Paul and his partner are getting closer by the second and she doesn’t think she has enough of a head start to be able to dash anywhere to get away from the bullets. She might be able to get away, get in front of the car and run with a little more cover, but the clearest path is straight towards the radioactive waste, and she’s not sure she can take rad poisoning on top of everything else right now.

But it might also be her only way out of this mess.

There’s a churning dark pit in her stomach that says maybe she should just give up- her husband and son are dead, she’s a woman out of time and she should be dead too. Maybe it would be easier to give it up, to come clean to these men and let them have what they want from her. It would be over, she knows that much. Maybe it’s no less than she deserves.

She can hear her parents in her mind. They were so disappointed in her betrayal. She ran from that, too. She had Nate, though- and then Shaun. But… now she doesn’t have anyone.

One of the men rounds the corner of the mail bin and spots her, his dirty face lighting up with a sleazy, toothless smile.

“Hey, Vaultie,” he purrs.

Eleanora shoots off before her conscious mind has caught up. She sprints faster than she thought possible, leapfrogging the rusted bonnet of an old Corvola ’45 and suddenly being very glad that she is wearing a solid helmet.

“HEY! Vaultie! You- uh- might wanna come back!”

She’s too far away to hear who shouted, but she takes a breath and opens her mouth and-

“Like hell I do, bastard!”

She keeps going, ignoring her Geiger counter ticking with a ferocity she hasn’t seen from it before. Even her Pip-Boy pings.

 _WARNING. ENTERING HIGHLY IRRADIATED AREA. RADIATION PROTECTION SUIT RECOMMENDED FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION_.

She manages to clear the overturned truck just down the road, and thanks whichever God was watching that she didn’t put her foot wrong and trip into some of that radioactive goo. She doesn’t know how much radiation she just took, but she knows it won’t be a healthy amount.

“Guess I can wave goodbye to my hair,” she mutters, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She ducks into a house just off the street, and stands looking through a crack in the wall at the two Raiders who had hunted her.

Down the street they stand by the mail bin, befuddled.

“What we gonna do now?”

“I ain’t swimming in that stuff. Vaultie’s lost her damn mind,” says Paul. “Ain’t no Vault suit worth Ghoulin’ myself up.”

“She’s gonna be Ghoul herself if she stays there much longer.”

“Or dead.”

A grin slides across Paul’s face and he looks down the street. “Maybe we should go and see if she’s still down there.”

“Hey, Vault lady!” yells the other Raider. “We’re coming for ya!”

“Shut up,” hisses Paul. “You’re gonna give us away!”

Eleanora gulps when she sees the two Raiders turn past a house and start skirting the radioactive spill. She turns on her foot to see if there’s anything useful in the tumbledown building. A bottle of dirty water and a box of Sugar Bombs lie on the kitchen counter, and there’s a half-charred magazine on the coffee table. Nothing useful. She turns to the stairs, hoping she’ll be able to find a place to hide upstairs if nothing else.

Upstairs there isn’t much. A rusted bedframe and an old mattress with some ratty blankets, a chest of drawers. A teddy bear, covered in dust but otherwise mostly untouched.

Eleanora doesn’t let herself think about the owner. Instead, she thinks that outside the window of the upper floor the downstairs conservatory roof is an inviting place to hide. She grabs the blankets and tumbles out there, throwing herself immediately to the floor and pulling the blankets over herself.

“At least they’re as gray as the roof,” she mutters, tucking one over her head just as the Raiders round a corner and start heading back towards the road once again.

“Here, Vaultie-vaultie-vaultie,” calls one of them.

Eleanora doesn’t dare poke her head up to look for them, just hopes the dusty old blankets will look like the rocks she’s lying on and that they won’t go too close to the roof to notice the difference.

“She went in here, I’m sure,” one of them says.

 _Fuck_ , thinks Eleanora. _Oh eight two one two oh five five okay how do I- calm, like Nate says, yes, breathe slowly. Slow as you can. Shallow._

She slows her breathing right down, hoping the shallow breaths she’s taking don’t give her away if the Raiders come up to the roof. There’s nothing she can do now but hope.

“She’s gotta be here somewhere. Check upstairs. Hey! Vaultie! We’re gonna find you,” sing-songs one of them, as boots start clomping their way heavily up the stairs.

“The Vault ones are always so dumb. Don’t know up from down out here in the Commonwealth. This one’s got balls though, I’ll give her that. Might even let her have a bit of fun before I slit her shiny little throat.”

“Can you at least wait until after we fuck her this time?”

“Maybe, if she don’t squirm too much.”

Eleanora’s heart is pounding and it’s taking all of her self-control to remain still and breathe slowly. She bites her lip hard enough she tastes the metallic tang of her blood and closes her eyes tightly as she hears footsteps crossing to the window. That bubble in her chest that wants to scream, it almost pokes its head out, but at the last moment Eleanora quashes it and clenches her fists under her stomach

“’Ey, Paul. Paul! What’s that?”

“Shit, that’s Eddie! And-“

“DEATHCLAW!” comes the shriek from further down the road. It ends in gurgles and a sickening, wet crunch.

Eleanora feels the roar in the pit of her stomach. The building wobbles, and the Raiders scurry back down the stairs.

“Eddie! ED!”

Eleanora hears them running down the road, and after a moment, feels brave enough to poke her head out from under the blanket.

She wishes she hadn’t.

The footsteps are heavy and shake the ground, and the Raiders are screaming now. Fully grown men, actually screaming in fear.

The deathclaw turns its head when it hears Eleanora’s blankets rustle. It stands the same height as her resting place on the conservatory roof. Its ears are long, and it holds the limp corpse of a human in its paws, one claw poked through the man’s ribs, dripping red. The claw alone is bigger than her torso.

It looks right at her and sniffs and she shuts her eyes, hoping it will look past her if she keeps still as a rock and her eyes shut. She wills it to be distracted by the raiders, still screaming. She daren’t breathe in case the deathclaw sees. _Please_ , she thinks. _Oh eight two one two oh five five. Please._

Suddenly, from somewhere in the distance, a familiar rattling sound starts up, and she shuts her eyes tighter. The raiders have clearly stumbled across something they need to kill, and the deathclaw looks back in their direction, sticks its tongue out as if tasting the air, and then growls.

It stomps off in the direction of the raiders and their gunfire, no second thought spared for Eleanora and her hiding place.

She breathes out slowly. She is shaking, more so than she ever has, and she wants to shriek again. She feels warmth between her legs, pooling under her belly, and knows without even looking that she’s wet herself in fear.

She wastes no time scrambling back into the house through the window and fighting with the Vault suit. She pulls it off and uses a corner of the blankets to dry herself off. Naked but for a bra, she tugs open the chest of drawers in a last ditch hopeful attempt she’ll find something.

Men’s boxers are in the first drawer, along with socks and a pair of gloves. Eleanora pulls the y-fronts on gratefully, followed by the socks. They’re too big, but she wiggles her toes appreciatively against the dirty cotton blend.

The next drawer down has two different sets of clothes- a dress that Eleanora would have killed for just three days ago- before. There’s also a brown shirt, made of thick cotton, and a pair of sturdy jeans she knows will last well when she’s walking. The drawers also contain a pistol and a handful of bullets, some money, and a few vests.

She tugs a vest on over her head, pulls the shirt on over the top, and shimmies her hips into the jeans. She stuffs the remaining clothes she wants- the vests, socks and underpants- into the one dry blanket, and knots it up as best she can. She looks at the Vault suit in disgust.

That Vault suit almost got her killed. She needs to be cured of almost definite radiation poisoning, and she was a target clear as day.

She kicks the Vault suit under the bed frame, and sits on the creaky mattress to pull her Vault-issue boots back on. “They’ll never know. None of them can ever know.”

We should be dead anyway, the voice in her mind says. What difference does it make?

She snorts at the little dark voice and stands, tugging the blanket over her shoulder. Her son is dead. Her husband is dead.

Her parents, her older brother. Their dog, Rocket.

All dead.

That emptiness in her chest grows just a little when she allows herself to think back to her family. That last Thanksgiving just before- just before. In fact it had been the start of everything. And the end.

She lays her hand on her stomach. Even ten months on, and she still feels bereft sometimes. It's like a hollowness she can't explain.

And now she feels even more empty. A woman out of time. She shoulders her pack, moves towards the stairs, and turns her gaze from her Vault suit. Her past lies in that suit, in the armor she stole that lies next to it. She quashes the bubble in her chest again and it feels a little easier to push it aside. There is nothing left inside her now.


End file.
